


Machinations Rag

by colloquialrhapsodist



Category: RWBY
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Femslash, Manipulation, Swearing, Villain Manipulating Protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colloquialrhapsodist/pseuds/colloquialrhapsodist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penny sneaks out to see Ruby.  The military's least favorite prisoner notices. </p>
<p>Based on Lampwick/Candlewick manipulating Pinocchio.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Machinations Rag

**Author's Note:**

> Listened to a fuck ton of electro swing music in preparation. If you're looking for recs, give Alice Francis a listen.
> 
> I love Ruby/Penny and just want them to be happy, but knowing me of course this is going to come with some... obstacles. Poor Penny, having me subject her to this asshole.

She's breaking rules, and she knows it.

"Penny? What are you doing out so late?"

She gives a jerky sort of pause, coming to an unnatural stop. Moonlight filters through the high windows, sparkling on the white floors and white containment units. Uniform and designed to be intimidating (to Penny it is simply a facility that works efficiently, much like her own body). The soldiers are never quite sure how to speak to her, she's noticed - she's not like exactly like them, more of a weapon and more of a child, so they take it in turns to be stiff and orderly, or exasperated and gruffly affectionate.

Not affectionate like Ruby. (The very word 'affection' is one she associates with Ruby.) There is no palpable temperature in emotions, but perhaps she could call it 'cold,' where Ruby is 'warm.'

"Salutations!" She salutes the soldiers as though she was not just caught sneaking around late at night, beaming. "I was simply... taking a walk!"

"At this hour?" the other soldier asks dryly.

"I guess she doesn't need sleep," the first adds, in a bit of a lighter voice.

"That is mostly correct," Penny says. "Though, like humans, my aura does need time to recharge, so human 'rest' is an activity I usually partake in at this time."

There's a cough and a shuffle from behind the cell the soldiers are guarding, and Penny's eyes zip to it, her memory clicking together. That's right - the fugitive, the one she'd seen cavorting with the White Fang, the one her father spoke of with such distaste (she'd gotten used to the idea of 'disgust,' considering her father's face isn't as expressive as most humans', she's come to notice, but when he speaks of Torchwick he becomes positively animated in comparison). 

The second soldier clears his throat, and Penny returns her gaze to the two of them. Her notice of the cell is no more than an environmental inventory; she puts him out of her mind.

"Do you have clearance to be here?" the second says, hovering somewhere between uncertainty and disapproval.

Is it possible for one to lie with their body? She tries, assembling her body into the familiar stiff posture of just  _standing_ , no shame, no guilt. She holds her shoulders awkwardly, and feels the beginnings of a bubble rise in her throat.

"Does Mr. Ironwood know where you're going?" the first asks, more gently.

"I-I..." She falters - her machinery had never been wired to hold the capacity to lie, and every time she does, something inside her creaks in protest. "Yes, he does," and the bubble reaches her mouth and she hiccups.

"You woke him up to tell him you're going for a walk?"

"Yes," Penny says with a hiccup. She hides her face in shame, pretending there's something interesting out of the windows (there isn't, and, boy, is it hard to pretend when all her attention is on the soldiers). "But this human interaction has... tired me out," hiccup, "I think I'll turn in after all."

She hurries back the way she came, deciding when security is tightest is  _not_ the best time to see her secret friend her father forbade her from meeting.

From behind the cell, Roman Torchwick says, "Didn't know Ironwood had a kid."

"He doesn't," grunts the second soldier. "Now shut your trap."

"Ha. So she's adopted?" He slumps against the cramped wall in his cell; his thumb and forefinger brush together, miming lighting up a cigar, missing the calming feel of cool steel slipping against leather. Fire flickering in the corner of his eyes. "Never took him for the type."

 

* * *

 

She's breaking rules and she's utterly, pristinely aware of it.

She can't help it - every time she sees Ruby's face, something in her chest feels like it swells and pops. Which  _can't_ be right, that's not how she works, mechanically speaking, and there's no click-clank of her joints knocking together. No telltale hollow plink against the overlapping metal plates that make up her torso. No tick-tock, no purring motor, no metallic jitter. Just the phantom feeling right somewhere smack in the middle of her chest (maybe a centimeter or two to the left) - just the spasm of her hands whenever Ruby's eyes light up - just the warmth that spreads to the tips of the twitching phalanges on her cold hands.

_A malfunction,_ she'd whispered once.

"A what?" Ruby'd heard her.

"A defect, I think."

"Haha, Penny, I know what  _malfunction_ means. Uh, but, is something wrong? You feeling okay?"

"I... don't know," she'd said uncertainly, glancing down at her fingers. The curved metal contours - still poking out of her synthetic flesh - reflected the distant sunlight. "There's something strange going on with me, and I don't know what it is, Ruby."

Ruby knocked her shoulder against Penny's playfully, hiding an obvious wince when her flesh hit stiff hardware. It was a 'friendly gesture,' one of the many Ruby had offered her since she had called her 'friend' (again, that fluttering in her abdominal region), so Penny declined a comment on how it had been a superfluous movement that had ended in a light bruise on Ruby's part. She'd tried before, and Ruby had always waved it off, insisting on treating her like a so-called 'normal person.'

(Moments like that made it painfully clear that she isn't.)

"Maybe you're just nervous that you're sneaking out without your dad's permission?" She hesitated, her brow furrowing. "Man. I can't imagine lying to, like, Yang about this stuff... you sure he's not too strict?"

"Oh, no, not at all," was Penny's automatic response, "he treats me as anyone would treat something like... me."

"You mean some _one_ like you." Ruby looked over at her. "And I don't know about that, Penny. There's never been anybody like you Vale - maybe all of Remnant, probably. You're one of a kind, y'know? How can one guy be expected to know exactly what to do for you?"

Penny hesitated.

"Besides, how wrong can hanging out with friends be?" Ruby continued. "How are you supposed to properly use your aura if you don't get any interactions with the people that  _have_ aura?"

"Yes," Penny said, "experience in the field is vital if I am to fully understand my capabilities."

"See? There you go. Maybe your dad's not  _always_ right."

Before Penny could form a response, Ruby'd thrown an arm around her shoulders and offered her a smile - no,  _that_ smile. (Penny has each one of Ruby's different smiles catalogued in her memory chip, from her battle-ready to her shy to her big, full, eyes-closed bright smile; and  _that_ one, the small, thoughtful, gentle one, like the two of them are sharing something private and secret and special, and Ruby's just as nervous as she is... well, that one makes her toes curl.) "I'll cover for you," she said, "if you ever get in trouble."

"B-but - I don't want  _you_ to - "

"I'll be fine! Look, you covered for me before, okay? Let me do the same for you,  _please._ You're a really good friend to me, and I'm... worried about you spending so much time around soldiers and so little time around, I don't know, normal people."

"Please be careful, Ruby."

"I'll be fine." Ruby repeated herself, giving Penny's hand a squeeze - and that feeling was back, the warmth and the twitching and the malfunction. Whatever it was, it was tied to Ruby, and she gave Ruby a big, bright smile back, wondering if it was just the sun warming her circuits.

"Sen- _sa-_ tional!" She threw her arms around Ruby, blooming with hope.

Ruby laughed.

 

* * *

 

She's breaking rules, and she feels guilty.

It's daytime, and she's going a familiar route outside; the easiest time to sneak out is in the middle of the day, she's discovered, when everyone's too busy to keep an eye on the robot girl with her bouncy feet and itchy legs and restless energy. As time had gone by, the security around Roman Torchwick's cell became lax, since no one was coming to bust him out and he can do nothing himself, crammed in that tiny cell. Midday's lunch break, quiet time, the rest of the building humming with dimmed activity - and also the easiest time to sneak by the containment center. There's only Torchwick in there, Torchwick who never says anything to her, and she has all but put him completely out her mind on her journeys to see Ruby.

And there's something much heavier on her mind, anyway. Guilt. _Guilt._  When one knows they've done something wrong and are contrite, perhaps overly so. That's a  _different_ sensation than the Ruby Effect (she's started calling that in her head to differentiate between all of these sensations and maybe-malfunctions), and much less pleasant; she feels as though her insides are melting, turning to glue. She pictures her father breaking her down into scrap metal, and frowns. Now that Ruby's put the idea in her head that friends are Good and Okay and even kind of Necessary, she wonders if that's even how he would react, or if he would just give her that tired sigh and knowing smile and tell her that, once again, she's not ready.

"I'm ready," she says to herself, shoulders squared. "I'm  _ready_ , I am!"

"You sure are, sweetheart."

Penny pauses. Her eyes swing to the containment unit. The only one currently in use.

Apparently Roman had registered her pause, because he says after a moment, "You're the... robot kid, right?"

"Yes," Penny says automatically - just an ingrained reaction to the sound of a human voice, complete with all those human lilts and human inflections, a sound she quietly aches for when her own feelings have just as many confusing lilts and inflections. She's a wide few meters away from Torchwick's cell, sealed tight enough that even the tiniest speck of Dust couldn't wiggle through. She doesn't like the way he says  _robot_ , she decides, and then momentarily wrestles with quiet confusion at why she reacts that way to a factual word in the first place.

" _Thought_ I recognized that voice."

She recognizes  _his_ , too, and her vivid memory recalls in perfect detail the time he shot at Ruby and she landed on her back.

"Sal-u- _ta_ tions," she responds, her hand jumping up to her forehead even though he can't see her (she's not really feeling the greeting, but that's how she'd figured humans greeted each other, and a cell didn't change that), and he laughs.

"Whoa, there's no need to get so, uh,  _formal,_ Miss Robogirl."

"It is simply a standard greeting," Penny says.

"Noooot sure what instruction manual you were reading, but I think it must've been playing a joke on you."

Now thoroughly confused, with a steadily growing list of things to correct Mr. Torchwick on, she quickly lists off, "Books don't have the motor capacity to play any kind of joke, I did not read an instruction manual, my name is Penny - "

" - yikes, don't you ever slow down? - "

" - and I have somewhere I'm going, goodbye."

She begins to walk down the hallway again, glad she tacked the 'goodbye' on at the end of that sentence - now Mr. Torchwick knows the conversation's over, and she can get back to meeting Ruby before anyone notices she's gone. It is polite, even if she doesn't feel like being polite to him, of all people, but she's still smiling because she should be friendly and polite anyway, right?

But Mr. Torchwick could do with reading an etiquette manual himself, because he says as she leaves, "Ironwood know where you're off to?"

She pauses. "Yes," she says, and hiccups.

There is a pause, in which he mutters something she doesn't quite catch.

"Off you go, then," he says, a grumble that is barely perceptible to the human ear, "don't let me keep you." And Penny doesn't dilly-dally; she marches straight out of there, and figures if Mr. Torchwick rats her out, at least she got to see Ruby ahead of time.

She picks up his whispers, but not the smirk that curls across his face like smoke.

 

* * *

 

"I don't think I like that Torchwick man," Penny said.

"Who does?" Ruby said, making a face.

 

* * *

 

She says nothing to him when she walks by his cell. On some days, he calls out "on a walk again, doll?" and she answers him with a quick hello-goodbye. She doesn't linger, and he doesn't tell anyone, for what reason she can't possibly fathom. As time wears on, she grows complacent, and even gives him a  _saluTAtions_ one day, which makes him choke out a laugh in surprise (and annoyance, what if someone  _heard_ them. still, he can't help but lose his shit every time she does that).

And on Roman's part, he waits. It's meticulous, boring work, but there's nothing for him to do except grow bored out of his mind staring at the never-changing walls and wait for Ironwood to try and intimidate him. Day after day after day. He's never been claustrophobic before, but once this is all over, he won't be the first to volunteer to hop into those big mechs, no siree. 

Hopefully, by then, he won't even need to pilot one. 

(Physically speaking.)

 

* * *

 

It's raining.

A lazy voice from that cell - "Not going out today?"

"No." Penny shakes her head, staring out the big, open windows, watching the water droplets race one another to the bottom. "We haven't conducted the waterproof tests yet."

"Shame." A yawn. Penny can't see how faked it is, how Roman's actually sitting upright, staring intently at the door.

(Cinder's not coming, which makes him seethe; she and her street rats don't bother to pick up the garbage left behind. As far as they're concerned, unless he gets himself out of there on his own, he's a useless waste of time, especially now that the ball's in Taurus's court. If he doesn't pick himself up off his ass, he'll be stuck here during the climax, and boy, that'd be a  _pain._ )

"I should return to my duties," Penny says, "but before I go, I have a question."

"Hmm? You've scurried outside my cell for weeks, now, and I've kept my mouth shut for you - not so much as a  _thank you, Mr. Torchwick, you're so kind!_ \- and now you want me to answer something for you?"

"I told you," Penny says, holding her breath, "that Mr. Ironwood knows."

There's a tense silence. She doesn't hiccup, and feels triumphant; after all, she  _did_ once tell him so, so that's not precisely a lie.

"Loopholes," Torchwick says, and Penny's not quite sure what he's referring to, her eyebrows pulling down. "Well. Let's hear it, then. I think I can pencil you in my busy schedule."

His sarcasm makes her narrow her eyes - sarcasm, she's picking up on it, and she has enough environmental clues in this instance to peg it a mile away (meaning: he never leaves his cell). "I was going to ask... why you  _haven't_ mentioned anything to anyone."

"I thought you said all of this was kosher?" Torchwick says, mockingly. "I shouldn't  _need_ to tell anyone if this is all old news."

Lying, she reflects as she twists her fingers together in nerves, is a lot harder than humans make it sound. It's different than simple inventory, than processing memories and emotions, because there's so much there is to keep track of that isn't even  _real_. It's frustrating.

"Well, yes," Penny says, her words a little stunted, her shoulders tensed _just in case_ a hiccup decides to build up in her throat, "but aren't you a bit... suspicious? All of the soldiers are."

"Why should I be? It makes no difference to me."  _Take notes, kid - lying's all about logic._ "Yeah, sure, I figured you were sneaking out - those little coughs of yours are just  _adorable_ and way too telling, you should work on that - but it's not really any of my business. If anything" - he shifts a little on the single metal slab that's supposed to serve as a seat - "if anything, I'm kinda rooting for you."

It's tantamount to how little Penny really knows about Roman Torchwick other than Bad Man and Do Not Trust and He Hurt Ruby Once And She'll Never Forgive Him For That, because that's when she turns and faces the cell door. Roman Torchwick is notoriously blasé, apathetic to any happenings that don't concern him in some fashion, and  _that_ makes sense - but the fact that Roman Torchwick bothered to remember that little exchange, that any of Penny's walks were accounted for in the clockwork of his machinations, that he even greets her whenever he hears her footsteps, well.

Penny knows a little bit about lying, and how it's deliberately saying something that is not true, but she knows even less about dishonest intentions.

"Rooting for me?" Penny asks, mystified. "That's... not the answer I expected."

"Well, think about it. I'm trapped in this rotten place, of  _course_ I'm gonna support someone who constantly ditches this hellhole. Makes sense, right?"

"That's different. I'm not imprisoned here."

"Oh, you're not?" Roman Torchwick says, leaning back against the cold wall. Imagining, with an impatient itch in his hands, tipping his hat over his eyes. "My mistake."

 

* * *

 

"Penny?"

"Yes, Ruby?"

They were walking in a little alleyway in Vale, because they, after all, didn't have anything to be afraid of in dark alleyways. The shadows were getting long, and Penny knew she would be missed - if she wasn't  _already_ \- but she couldn't bring herself to go back. Not yet.

"Do you ever feel... cooped up?"

Penny blinked. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, like... over with Atlas and stuff. Your dad let you come here to see the tournament, but he doesn't let you do almost  _anything_ besides. I've just told Yang and Weiss and Blake that your dad's really strict, and nothing about the android stuff, but - honestly?"

Ruby stopped, and Penny stopped with her, clasping her hands in front of her.

"Honestly, Penny... the fact that you can't go out and mingle is... the  _most_ worrying."

"Oh, no!" Penny held up her palms, flapping her hands in earnest. "He's a  _brilliant_ man, very sweet, he just... he just doesn't want me getting hurt, you know? Or - or accidentally hurting other people in the process."

"Penny, you're not the only person - yes,  _person_ \- with a lot of power packed into a tiny space!" Frustrated, Ruby laced her fingers through Penny's, which made her freeze in her tracks. "You're one of the gentlest people I know, and you've got lots of control over yourself. If anything, what you need is - is people to talk to!"

"Where... where is this coming from?"

"I'm just..." Ruby looked at the ground. "... I'm just worried about you. The more you talk about it in there, the more it seems like... you're Ironwood's misbehaved pet, or something. I don't like it."

Penny said nothing, holding Ruby's hand with all the careful hesitation of cupping a live moth between her palms.

 

* * *

 

"What did you mean, before?"

"You're going to have to be a tad more specific, dearie."

She's facing the cell, talking to it, even. She's been doing that more and more, lately, listening to the little hisses of his that squeeze through the cracks in the door like how most of the air can't. Her head is bowed, even though he can't see it.

"You implied you thought I'm... imprisoned."

"So you  _did_ catch that." He sounds cheerful in a way that rings wrong and false. "I thought I'd grow old and die in here before you asked me about it."

"What did you mean?" she presses.

"Okay. I'll answer your question. You just have to answer one of mine this time. Deal?"

Penny considers this. Her cold uncertainty about her current state of affairs is the most troubling. And there's little he can do with any information she gives him, trapped inside that cell. "That is fair."

"You just seem like Ironwood's dog, is all." Her hands freeze in their nervous dance. "You've got this big, nice playground, sure, but in the end there's still the electric fence and all the people here that aren't  _like_ you. They either dote on you, or they're scolding you. And, hey, it's not your fault. They've been training you since day one to not want more out of life."

_Misbehaved pet._

"I don't think that's true," Penny says loudly. "I like it here."

She hiccups.

Roman laughs. "My turn," he says.

"What... do you want to know?"

"What's your name, kid?"

"... That's all?" What a funny question. Surely he'd heard it from the guards before?

"Yeah. It'd be, uh, good  _practice_ for you. Introducing yourself to people."

She hesitates, staring at the cell door. Torchwick waits in impatient silence, rolling his fingers along his knee - but he says nothing. Pull a string too soon, and it snaps.

"... My name is Penny," she says.

"We~ell, it's nice to meet you, Miss Penny."

 

* * *

 

The guards catch Roman Torchwick laughing. Cackling, almost. They're convinced he's lost his mind.

"Hey. What's all that ruckus about?"

"Oh, nothing," Roman Torchwick says. "I think I just finally got used to being in here, that's all."

He scrawls imaginary words on the wall with his index finger, swearing under his breath in jubilation.

_Hook. Line. Sinker._

 

* * *

 

"You've got a lot of guts, you know, Penny."

"I don't have those," Penny says automatically. (Ruby's voice echoes in her mind:  _squishy guts._ ) Ever since she'd told him her name, Torchwick seems to take every opportunity to use it. 

It's nighttime, and Penny's been assigned guard duty for once. They're giving her more and more jobs, more work, more things to do, that her visits with Ruby are growing rarer and rarer. She  _misses_ human contact, she misses talking to someone and feeling like they're really  _listening._ She misses Ruby most of all, and an insulting, vulgar criminal in no way makes up for her absence - but there's a hollow place in her chest that craves  _real_ interaction (even though she's not a real girl) and that's why she's sitting on the ground by Torchwick's cell, arms curled around her legs, her chin propped up on her knees.

"I meant metaphorically."

"Oh."

"You're not afraid to go after what you want, you know? What you  _deserve._  And you don't deserve to be trapped here, without anyone to really talk to."

"I guess," Penny mumbles. She tries not to think of Ruby, of those same words coming out of her mouth.

Which is a task made even more difficult when Torchwick adds, desperate honey laced in his tone, "I'm worried about you."

Penny's head zips up so fast that it hits the door to his cell with a defeaning  _clang._ There's a little dent left behind, but Penny doesn't notice it.

"They're giving you less and less freedom. You haven't gone out to meet whoever you've been seeing in  _ages._ "

"How do you know it's a  _who_?" Penny blusters.

"Puh- _lease._ You really expect me to believe you've picked up social skills from the stiffs around here? You've even figured out when I'm being sarcastic." A couple of dry claps. "Bravo, by the way."

"My father forbade me from seeing her." She picks at her skirt without really noticing what she's saying, a slump in her shoulders. She has no one to talk to here, no one, no one, just Roman Torchwick, who makes fun of her every other sentence, she's sure. "I- ... she thinks it's not fair."

"Your friend's right." He hovers a little bit on the word 'friend,' like he's making some kind of joke, but Penny can't for the life of her figure out what the joke  _is_. Maybe he's guessed that she's not even sure if 'friend' is the right word for Ruby anymore - it seems too tame, too calm. "It  _isn't_ fair."

When Penny says nothing, he says, "Come on. Take something for yourself for once. Life's a lot more fun when you go after what you want." _  
_

"Going after what  _you_ wanted ended up with a lot of people hurt," Penny says. "And you in jail."

"Okay, Miss Debbie Downer, when you put it like  _that._ But, really. Who does it harm by trying to keep your friend?"

"My... my father will be disappointed."

"Ohhh, man,  _disappointment?_ That's the end of the world if I ever heard it."

"That's a hyperbole," Penny says accusingly.

Roman lifts his palms, though she can't see him. "Caught me. Doesn't mean I don't have a point, though. You having a friend makes you  _happy._ Gives you something to do, to look forward to, even if daddy dearest doesn't agree."

"My father's very smart - "

"But he's not always right."

_See? There you go. Maybe your dad's not_ always  _right._

"I'm turning in," Penny says, standing, and hurries down the corridor, something heavy and uncomfortable sinking down in the pit of her stomach.

 

* * *

 

"Mr. Torchwick!"

"Eh?" Torchwick jerks up, shoving the sleep out of his head with a rough shake of his head. "Penny? Kid, you have any idea what  _time_ it is?" (Not that he did.)

"Mr. Torchwick..." Penny skids to a halt outside of his cell. Her fingers are dancing faster than they ever have her entire life, twisting and folding over themselves in an agitated duet; that imaginary moth would've been crushed. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. "They're - they're going to put a tracker in me."

"A  _tracker_?"

"Yes, yes! I-I..." She tries to breathe. Something harsh curls up in her throat, sitting in wait, but it's not a hiccup. This is more of the truth than she'd ever wanted to spill, after all. "... m-my father... says that I'm too restless. I'll  _never_ get to see Ruby again, and I don't know what to do."

_Ruby? She doesn't mean - not Red?_ He smirks. That's an interesting development, but not surprising. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. What exactly do you expect me to do about this? Kinda trapped, here."

"I know, b-but - if I go see Ruby, she might get in trouble - " The misery in her tone is sky-high; she's never felt so jittery before, so shaken up, so  _defective._ "I don't know what to  _do_ \- "

"So you came to me?"

She nods, which he doesn't see. So she says, "Yes," in an empty sort of voice, because after all, what can either of them do?

"Well," Roman Torchwick says, as delicately as he can. This stage is so fragile, if he moves too quickly, it will all shatter at his feet and he'll be stuck seeing Cinder's face laughing at him on his eyelids for the rest of his miserable life. "Well. Sounds like you're in quite the predicament. I guess it just depends..."

"Depends?" Penny says desperately. "Depends on  _what_?"

"How much you feel like aiding and abetting a criminal."

She's silent. There's a metallic thud in the back of her synthetic skull, somewhere. But she says nothing.

"Come on, Penny. Your father's wrong about you. I know it. Red -  _Ruby_ knows it. You know it, too, somewhere deep, deep down. Don't you think if he  _really_ cared about your well-being as a pseudo-human girl, he'd give you plenty of outlets and... ways to express yourself?" He doesn't even have the dignity to be disgusted with himself, because he's close, he's so so close, he can almost smell the fresh air, hear Emerald's disgusted and reluctantly impressed grunt of surprise when he weasels back into their operation. "And if he's wrong about  _you_ , what else is he wrong about?"

"Not you, if that's what you're getting at, you've hurt people - "

" - and the military hasn't? We're in a  _war_ , Penny. Mr. Ironwood's probably told you all about it. The difference between me and the military is that I can actually give you what you want.

"All you need to do is let me out of this cell."

It's so quiet, they could hear a pin drop. As it stands, Penny can hear distant, frenetic voices. No doubt looking for  _her_ , considering how fast she'd dashed off when she'd learned what the tracker would mean for her... for Ruby...

There's no time, she has no time to make a decision for herself, not on this scale.

"You've got to promise," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "You've got to  _promise_ to keep Ruby out of harm's way."

"Wouldn't dream of hurting a hair on her head." His fingers crossed, behind his back, because even though Penny can't see him and has no real way of knowing he's lying, he's always been a sucker for appearances. 

"Say it. Say that you promise."

"I promise."

Her heartbeat ticks in the silence. She takes a breath.

The door slowly shudders open.

Roman Torchwick stands, slowly, the sudden light making him blink. Penny watches him, stiff and quivering in apprehension and indecisiveness, and he appraises her with one eye, the other one hid behind a scraggly curtain of orange-and-red, overgrown from his time in prison. He strolls forward, leisurely, not wasting time, enjoying the feel of  _freedom_ in his feet and hands and ankles and, and, hahahaha, oh  _God_ he's ready to get out of this goddamned place.

He grabs Penny by the waist and dips her, grinning.

"Thanks, doll. Couldn't have done it without you."

**Author's Note:**

> So help me God, none of you better be shipping Penny/Torchwick after this. It's, like, the definition of an interaction founded on manipulation.


End file.
